Squeaks, Slides, and Slips

Xian Zhang is the associate conductor of the New York Philharmonic, working under Lorin Maazel. She holds the Arturo Toscanini Chair, no less — a chair with an exalted name. On the evidence of recent seasons, Ms. Zhang is a smart and hardworking musician; on the podium, she is efficient and very energetic. Also, she seems to have picked up a thing or two from Mr. Maazel.About 20 years ago, I heard a musician say about a youngish conductor, “He’s got some Lenny moves” (referring to Maestro Bernstein). Well, Ms. Zhang has some Lorin moves.She conducted the Philharmonic in a concert on Thursday night, and a most unfortunate concert it was. In the course of what one hopes will be a long career, she will have many, many better nights.The concert began with a piece by Huang Ruo, who was born in China in 1976 and now teaches at SUNY–Purchase. Actually, this was two pieces, from “Three Pieces for Orchestra” (if you can follow that). The first was “Fanfare,” and the second was “Announcement.” And they are true to their names. What the second piece is announcing, I’m not sure, but a listener is entitled to use his imagination.Being a modern composer — and a modern Chinese-American composer — Mr. Huang employs a lot of percussion. The orchestra is busy, and produces many yawps. Mr. Huang also allows a melody or two to steal in. (Will he be kicked out of the Composers’ Guild?) Indeed, he asks his instrumentalists to sing, which the Philharmonic’s did, sort of hauntingly. Finally, Mr. Huang writes as mammoth a gong crescendo as you’ll ever hear.He is a talent, and it will be interesting to see what he does in the future. And may I add — hesitantly — that, at one point in these proceedings, I thought I heard a quotation from Puccini’s “Turandot”? Really.Following this Chinesey opening was something semi-Spanish: the “Symphonie espagnole” for violin and orchestra by Lalo. And the soloist was Vadim Repin, the famed Russian. From this performance, you couldn’t possibly know how that fame came about.Lalo’s ingenious piece requires, above all, charm, elegance, and panache. (Find a recording of Zino Francescatti.) And Mr. Repin was missing all of these. His “Symphonie espagnole” was incredibly grim and unsmiling; he played it as though he didn’t like the music — as though he had been assigned some onerous task. The most you can say for him was that he evinced a brusque masculinity. Think of a linebacker attempting ballet.He produced hardly any beauty of tone, which meant, among other things, that the Andante had no chance. And his technique was faulty, full of squeaks, slides, and slips. One could go on, but suffice it to say that we rarely have a performance by a professional musician so poor. Mr. Repin can do better — much better. And I trust he did when this concert was repeated on Friday and Saturday nights.The orchestra, in the Lalo, was no better: blunt, coarse, hard — inelegant, uncharming. The “Symphonie espagnole” is, if nothing else, enjoyable. And I hadn’t thought it possible that it could ever be so unenjoyable. Musicality was almost completely absent.On the second half of the concert, Ms. Zhang conducted the Seventh Symphony of Beethoven. In the first movement, she was lithe and energetic — very energetic. The second movement, Allegretto, bordered on too fast, and might have crossed that border. In addition, the orchestra was not always together. And they were more effective forte than mezzo-forte, or mezzo-piano. This is a problem.As for the third movement — Presto — it burbled adequately. Ms. Zhang worked like mad on that podium. Is that necessary? But we’re reminded that different conductors have different methods. Some flick, some flail, some churn. Oddly, for all the energy coming from Ms. Zhang and the orchestra, the Presto’s ending was limp.And the fourth movement was really a letdown. Super-fast, it was robotic, as though from a computer. It was without nobility, without uplift, without much humanity. Wagner famously called this music “the apotheosis of the dance.” If this is true, then on Thursday night we had something like a techno dance.Seeing that I’m full of complaints, let me mention an ad in the Philharmonic’s program booklet. In fact, this ad recurs in all the Lincoln Center programs — at the Metropolitan Opera, etc. Carnegie Hall, too. This ad (for a perfume) is very prominently placed: opposite the page that gives the initial information about the event in question. And it’s pretty much straight soft porn. A pubescent female (woman? girl?) lies naked, with the red, swollen lips of her mouth widely and vulgarly parted.I realize that the entire culture has gone this way, and that one must get with the program (so to speak). And no one likes a square. But is this what New York arts institutions, and their patrons, really want?

Squeaks, Slides, and Slips

Squeaks, Slides, and Slips

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